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Dr. Lloyd Armstrong is the recipient of USC’s highest honor, the Presidential Medallion. USC’s provost emeritus, he served as the university’s chief academic officer from 1993 to 2005. During that time, he was the driving force behind USC’s dramatic rise in various national rankings over the past decade. His accomplishments include the overhaul of the core undergraduate curriculum and the university’s student-recruitment program, as well as the creation and implementation of the 1994 Strategic Plan and its 1998 update – all of which have transformed USC into one of the most selective universities in the country.

A physicist who earned his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley before becoming dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Armstrong has joined the Rossier School’s Pullias Center for Higher Education as an affiliated professor focusing on issues of university leadership, knowledge production and change.

Armstrong began his academic career as a research associate at Johns Hopkins University in 1968, became an assistant professor of physics there in 1969, associate professor in 1973 and professor in 1977. He was appointed chair of the department of physics and astronomy in 1985 and dean of the School of Arts and Sciences in 1987. He served in that capacity until joining the USC administration in 1993. He is the author or co-author of six books and has written 68 journal articles. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1962 and his Ph.D. in physics from UC Berkeley in 1966.